Compacting tracks - Triming out sections - Disk usage problems

[Mark_Knecht]

Hello,
Today I recorded some live vocals in one long session. The sound is great. It's 13 songs over 35 minutes in one long session that ammounts to 1GB of audio.

My original intention, and what I'm doing now, is attempting to break out sections into separate sessions, and it's working. However, each session is still 1GB. I've tried triming, inserting silence, deleting, everything I can find, but I'm not actually able to reduce the size of a track down to the size of one song. It just stays large.

I also found an opertion to 'Compact' a track, (right click the track name list on the right hand side of the edit window) but everytime I do it my machine just locks up. One time the file because smaller, but the other times it didn't.

Who know how to do this right?

Thanks,
Mark

[crs117]

Mark,

My guess is that in creating each of the new sessions one of 2 things are happening. If they are each using the same audio files then you will only have one set of tracks and each session will only deal with the part of track that you have selected and cut out.

My second guess is that if each session folder is 1 gig per song (which with 13 songs would be 13 gigs) then you are copying the audio file to each session folder and again only using the section that you have cut out for each session.

Remember that protools is non destructive. The audio files that are inside the audio folder remain the same, only the session data tells where each part of the audio files play and where they dont play. You could import the tracks into some other program like sound forge which is destructive and cut and paste, then reopen in pt.

Even in nondestructive mode the tracks remain unchanged during edits unless you record over (i think this is correct) inside of pt.

Christian

[Mark_Knecht]

Christian,
Yeah, you're exactly right about what I'm doing. I found a short term fix, which is to create multiple sessions in the same directory that holds the audio folder, allowing each session access to the same audio files. I fear in the end this won't work if I automate fades, as each session may create it's own fades over the top of all the other sessions...

I can extend the idea, I suppose, by creating sessions that point to the same (distant) audio files, instead of keeping the audio local. That way each session could create it's own fades...

Isn't there a way to grab a region of audio from a track and copy it somewhere else?

Thanks,
Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Knecht (edited June 12, 2001).]

[homerg]

Try "Create a backup of session" and make sure to check where it says to save audio files too. This will create a separate folder with all the audio files needed for the session. I think it's under "file", then create backup of session or something like that. Once you've backed them all up to separate folders, delete the original 1GB folder. You should also clean them up by consolidating each track and then go to the window on the right side of the edit window and do a select/all unused, then I think you do a delete or remove ro something like that. I'm at work and don't have it in fron of me. Sorry. Hope this makes sence and helps.

[Jaleo]

Maybe the answer would be to highlight each track and song, and bounce it to another file of its own? This is an interesting topic...

[Lawrence Arps]

Hi I'm not at my PT set up but if I remember correctly, "consolidate regions" creates new audio data. If I'm right, trim up the regions for each song and consolidate, then select unused and delete. (If my memory has failed me --Sorry

[crs117]

Mark,

I dont recall having problems working with fades or automation with multiple sessions using the same audio file. I have not looked too much into it, but i am pretty sure each new session file (not entire session) stores the automation and fades seperately from the others. i recorded a 3hour show live with nearly 27 gigs of audio and i seperated a lot of the songs with different fades and no fade from a previus seesion effected the fade of a session next to it. i think you should be fine if you just do save as and change the that specific session files name. This is how i did it without problems.

Christian